There are many possible factors that impact student learning. The following summary offers a way to categorize the major factors and provides basic information to help understand each of the factors. If you are a teacher and some students in your class are not succeeding, why? Is it because your teaching is not adequate, or perhaps, is it because there are factors involved in how well students learn that are causing the problem. We can help to understand why a given student is struggling and provide tools to help solve the problem so these students can learn more effectively.
In general, it seems as if the education paradigm believes that instructional effectiveness = academic success. Effective instruction is important, but often not sufficient for many students. How well a student learns and their situational variables play a big part in academic success. The true formula is more like Education Success = Teaching Effectiveness X Student Learning Effectiveness. Items 2-6 relate to student learning effectiveness. Historically, most education reform has focused on instructional elements, yet the problem persists. We recommend also evaluating the elements of student learning effectiveness in order to improve overall academic performance.
Inadequate Instruction
This category includes all elements that go into providing instruction to students. This includes curriculum, policies, physical plant, administration, teachers, teacher qualifications, teacher training, scheduling, special education, parent engagement, standards, testing, etc. If a reasonable number of students are succeeding academically in a given school or class, it is practical to assume that the instruction element is working in principle for students who are learning ready. However, the curriculum may not work for students who struggle. Supplemental reading approaches may need to be considered that are better suited for struggling readers. An example is Reading Kingdom. In addition, the other five factors should also be evaluated for each student and addressed as needed.
Physiological condition
Some students have a medical condition that impedes learning. It is common for schools to evaluate hearing and vision to ensure neither of these senses is causing a problem. There are a host of potential medical conditions that could be causing a learning disability. There are several conditions that have been identified which impact how well information is delivered into the brain, yet are not part of the mainstream medical evaluation process. Fortunately, the percentage of children who go undiagnosed is limited, but it should be more closely evaluated for any student who struggles with learning. Below are three representative website resources that provide insights into these kinds of issues. We are not endorsing them, but have found the information to be of value in some cases.
- Irlen Syndrome
- Levinson Medical Center for Learning Disabilities
- Reflexes, Learning and Behavior, Sally Goddard
Family and personal situation
Some family situations are more stressful and less supportive than others. We are not blaming families or children, but suggest that schools have to consider the impact that certain personal situations may have on the learning process. Most schools already work hard to address nutritional needs. If a child is not getting adequate and proper nutrition, that certainly impacts learning.
There are several studies that have demonstrated that some children enter school with a major deficit in language skills, especially vocabulary. Early childhood programs are working to address these needs during the critical development time frame of age 0-5, but it is impractical to believe that the problem can be resolved for all children in need, at least in the near term. So schools have to be prepared to close the skill gap for some children. We also have to explore practical ways to address the emotional complications and stress some children face because of their family situation. These stressors often impact mindset, attitude, and performance character traits.
There are also studies that have linked childhood stress to working memory issues.
Childhood poverty, chronic stress, and adult working memory
Stress may delay brain development in early years
Learned-skill deficits
There are several different kinds of skills. For this purpose, there are skills which are not content based, processing skills, and there are skills which are content based, learned skills. Reading and math are learned skills; they are not something a student is born to know or born with that capacity. One of the most critical learned skills for students entering kindergarten is vocabulary. Several studies have identified that some children enter kindergarten with such a vocabulary gap that it impedes them from becoming successful readers.
The following link provides access to a video from the website, Children of the Code, which summarizes the findings of a well known study on the vocabulary gap.
Meaningful Differences
We also highly recommend that all educators review the materials on the Children of the Code website.
Schools must be prepared to identify and close learned-skill deficits. The Common Core State Standards provide a good source of guidelines on what children should know in the early grades K-2. The challenge is to catch up those students who are behind while teachers must also focus on teaching grade-level content.
English-language learners may also have to catch up on needed learned skills. If they have strong skills in their native language, the transition may be easier. If they also have weak learned skills in their native language, it will require additional effort to catch up these skills. Regardless, students need certain learned skills in order to be ready to manage grade-level content. If they are behind, schools must adjust and catch these students up to grade level.
Processing-Skill deficits
Processing skills such as attention, processing speed, memory, auditory processing, visual processing and logic and reasoning are not measured by how much a student knows related to content. These skills are part of the brain’s system for learning, thinking and managing information. Scientists have identified and measured at least 70 different cognitive skills. Many skills are subsets of the skills noted above. For example, the following skills are a subset of memory: working memory, short-term memory, long-term memory, auditory memory and visual memory.
For more information on cognitive skills, we recommend reviewing the materials at the Wikipedia site regarding the Cattell–Horn–Carroll theory, or CHC theory.
There are three general systems that impact learning: 1) how information gets into the brain, 2) how information is processed by the brain and 3) instruction. If information is not getting into the brain properly, that makes learning difficult irrespective of processing skills and instruction. If information gets into the brain properly, yet the brain cannot process this information properly, that makes learning difficult irrespective of how well instruction is delivered. Granted, instruction can be differentiated and adapted to compensate for some weak processing skills, but in many cases, weak processing skills are the primary causes of learning struggles.
The education system does not routinely evaluate processing skills and thereby does not know which students have weak processing skills which may be impeding their ability to learn. Assessing cognitive skills is old technology and commonly used in the process to determine if a struggling student qualifies for special education services. The testing historically has been done one-on-one and is resource intensive, which limits how much testing schools have been willing to do. The special education model generally has assumed that weak cognitive skills cannot be improved to any significant degree. The typical response has been to provide compensation strategies and to provide intensive tutoring assistance which does not address the underlying cause of the problem.
There is a growing body of scientifically-validated research and successful clinical programs that indicate many processing skills can be improved with the proper intensive training. Irrespective of this finding, knowing whether a struggling student has any weak processing skills is important to help understand why that student struggles with learning. We advocate that schools should routinely assess processing skills for all students, similar in principle to screening for hearing or vision problems. In steady-state, once all students in the 2nd grade and above have been assessed, it would only be necessary to perform this screening on an ongoing basis in the 2nd grade and in cases when older students experience some event that potentially could have impacted their processing skills, such as an illness or head trauma.
Heretofore, this was impractical because of cost and resource limitations. We have developed a normed online cognitive screening tool that provides a basic assessment of the foundational processing skills. The assessment takes only about 40 minutes to complete and results are available immediately upon completion. Now it is possible to assess all students easily and affordably.
Mindset, motivation and performance character
Attitude and beliefs can significantly impact a student’s ability to learn. If a student is not motivated to listen and study, it is hard for a teacher to make them want to learn. Students who struggle with learning may find school to be challenging and experience that it reinforces their struggle which may cause them to have a fixed or negative mindset about learning, their school and themself.
In several demonstration schools, we learned that too often children view our training as challenging and gave up too easily. Failure was reinforcing their self image that they could not succeed. We had to work to help these children overcome this fixed mindset and embrace the challenge. Carol Dweck describes this process as changing from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. We experienced this very thing. Once we got the children to have a more open mind, a growth mindset, they started succeeding and success begat more success.
We recommend reviewing the work of Professor Carol Dweck to gain a better understand of mindset.
Grow Your Intelligence
We also recommend reviewing the work of Daniel Pink on motivation. There is a great TED presentation that will give you a good overview of his research. Motivating students can be challenging and the work of Daniel Pink will help provide insights on how best to accomplish this.
We recommend reviewing the work of Paul Tough and his book, How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, to gain a better understanding of the role of character in academic and life success.
There have been several studies looking at performance character traits trying to identify which traits are most likely to predict academic and life success. Paul Tough summarizes many of these studies and comes to the conclusive that grit is mostly likely to predict success. This concept links closely with the work of Carol Dweck.
Students who have low self esteem, fear challenge, believe their intelligence is fixed, want immediate gratification, don’t enjoy learning for the intrinsic value, etc., are not as likely to succeed as those who have the opposite traits. Teachers can use techniques identified in these materials to change student mindset from fixed to growth, persuade students that tackling challenges is fun and will lead to learning, can persuade students that intelligence is not fixed, can find ways to intrinsically motivate students and can improve the learning environment.
Teachers can also become more sensitive to understanding better why students struggle and guide them to success.